


Not Always That Clear

by gloss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cuddling, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Vision loss, but it's in there, hearing loss, not grossly detailed eye injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 08:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6148091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their escape from the <i>Finalizer</i> and crash on Jakku go even worse. At least they reunite earlier?</p><p>For h/c bingo</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Always That Clear

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Morcheeba, [Fear and Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqCWZLToZoQ). Thanks to G. for beta & Marcia for indulgence (Damerondulgence?).

He's never going to fly again: Poe knew that as soon as he came to. 

A stormtrooper was dragging him by one ankle through the sand. 

He remembers asking, "Finn?" 

His voice was cracked. Speaking ripped at the dry skin of his lips. Worse, the stormtrooper didn't respond. Maybe it wasn't his new friend.

Or maybe his new friend was not so friendly after all. 

Jakku's sun blazed down; his head bumped and knocked every little rock, jolting pain in jagged forks of lightning down the length of his body. He closed his eyes again, then opened them, and realized what was wrong. His left eye was fine: squinting against the painful glare, he saw the white uniform, blue-white sky, burning sand. Everything stark and hot-edged. 

But his right eye was _wrong_. Through it, Jakku looked lovely, the color of sweet pale honey, every trembling edge blurred and melting. Silvery rain clouds seemed to dance at the edges of his vision. His legs looked like they were buckling, bending together.

He must have knocked something loose in the crash. 

He doesn't know how much time has passed since he came to. His right eye is already much worse. The rain clouds are darkening and drawing closer together.

Another stormtrooper waited for them at the top of the rise. Poe caught a glimpse of the smoking ruin of his crash before they yanked him to his feet and turned him around. 

Their talk was indecipherable; they'd laid him on his bad ear, the one that Kylo Ren clawed into his brain through, the one that still throbbed. The trickle of blood had stopped while he was out. Maybe it had just dried up in the sun.

They clapped binders onto his wrists and ankles, tossed him across the back of a sandspeeder, and brought him here. It might have been a mining installation, or maybe it's always been a dungeon. He doesn't think this is an official First Order facility. If it is, maybe there is some hope for the resistance, because this place is, literally, a karking pit. 

A dark pit, damp in the corners, stinking of urine and vomit and who knows what else. One wall is metal, pretty thick by the sound of it when he bangs on it. The other three walls as well as the floor and ceiling are lined with rocks of every size, shape, and thickness. He knows that because he's shuffled along every inch of this room, tracing out the rocks, trying to chip away at the mortar between them. He failed at that, too. 

This entire mission never happened. Will never have happened. He doesn't know what verb tense to use for something that he's living through that never happened. He has failed to matter.

He's sitting down in the far corner, knees up to his chest, arms around his knees, head down, when a racket starts up somewhere outside. He can hear it best when he turns his good ear toward the door; otherwise, it's a muffled thing like distant thunder or the noise of another ship passing his own. It's outside, high up, but getting closer and closer. He can make out shouting, the heavy tread of jackboots, then the thud of a body against the metal door. It's heaved open and the man yelling is thrown inside.

He's still yelling even as he stumbles in the sand. "You'll pay for this! The Resistance never forgets its own!"

The door slams shut.

Poe closes his bad eye and squints. He can make out a man about his height, but built bigger, kicking at the sand.

"Finn?" he tries. It makes no sense that it would be him -- yelling about the resistance, to boot -- but it _sounds_ like him. Kind of looks like him, not that Poe can trust his vision any longer.

The figure freezes, then drops to his knees and crawls forward. He's saying something.

"Speak up," Poe says. He touches his ear and leans forward. "Is that you?"

" _Poe_?"

Their embrace is awkward, with Finn overbalanced on his knees and Poe stuck against the wall, but no less enthusiastic for that. Finn braces one hand on the wall but doesn't let go with the other. Just leans back a little like he wants to take in the view, such as it is. 

"You're _alive_ ," he says.

Poe clutches at Finn's arms. The fabric under his palms is familiar, supple leather, still hot from the sun outside. He should say a thousand other things, but what comes out is, "That's my jacket."

He sounds petulant, but he just feels confused.

"Oh, yeah." Finn goes to shrug it off. "Sorry about that. I --"

"No, keep it." Poe's starting to get a little dizzy from sitting upright this long. He rests his cheek, good ear out, against Finn's outstretched arm, just long enough to get his wits together. 

"I found it," Finn says gently. He pauses while Poe closes his eyes, then continues, his voice sounding wetter, younger. "By the crash. I thought. I thought you..."

"I ejected," Poe tells him and tips his head back against the wall. Some of the dull, thudding pain lessens when he does. "Didn't do much good."

"You're really banged up."

Poe opens his good eye. "Thanks, man. Wouldn't want to come out of this unscathed."

"No, I mean --" Finn cups Poe's cheek and turns his face slowly back and forth. "You feel sleepy?"

"Yeah."

"Can you open your eye?"

"I _can_ ," Poe tells him, "but I don't want to."

"What about your ear?"

"That's been bad since --" He circles his hand and points upward. "Before."

Finn sits back on his heels, hands splayed on his knees. For a moment after he withdraws, Poe feels himself sag, yearn, almost tumble forward.

"Can you walk?"

"Yeah," Poe says. "Yeah, I can walk. No broken bones. I've got a hell of a concussion. And I'm about 98% sure I detached my retina. Other than that, I've never felt better." He plasters on a smile, cocks his head and asks in his best cantina-flirt voice, "More important, how are _you_?"

In another life, he thinks, he would have used that line, immediately and sincerely, just as soon as he laid eyes on this kid. 

Finn shifts a little and grins at him, looking both unsettled and intrigued, unsure and interested. "I'm good."

He has a crazy-wide smile. Poe struggles to pull himself up, despite the pain. "Want to explain yelling about the Resistance?"

Finn glances anxiously at the door, then back at Poe. His mouth moves but it just sounds like gravel.

Poe leans forward and taps his good ear. "Again?"

The heat of Finn's mouth against his ear is more than enough to cut through his pain, his exhaustion, _everything_. Poe curls both sets of fingers into his palms and swallows hard.

"They didn't recognize me."

"So you just went ahead and embraced the most ridiculous cover story instead?"

Finn ducks his head for a moment; when he looks back up, he's got that tense, almost radiant look in his eyes that he had when he pulled Poe aside on the _Finalizer_. 

"If they knew who I was," he whispers, mouth millimeters from Poe's bruised cheek, "they'd bring my head back to the First Order as a prize."

Poe whistles. Finn's still staring at him, searching his face for...Poe doesn't know what, but he realizes that he wants to give it to him. Whatever it is.

He tries to catch that thought before it goes any further. For all he knows, Finn's a plant, sent here to get more information from him. 

Now, _that_ is a hilarious thought. He wants to smile for the first time today. Kylo Ren already took everything Poe had, every beloved memory and every forgotten stray thought, every triumph and every shame, from the first wet dream he had to what BB-8 was carrying, from that time he saw his parents fucking to the deep, scary need he feels, a chasm opening to hellfire, when the general smiles at him. 

Poe doesn't have anything left _to_ give. Finn's welcome to whatever he manages to scrounge up.

Finn leans in again, mouth hovering over Poe's ear, the hollow of his jaw. Hot breath that stills. "We're going to get out of this."

"You sound pretty sure of yourself," Poe says. It's easier not to move away. It's easier to tip his head against Finn's shoulder and breathe in the comforting mixture of their scents. He can hear okay, see Finn pretty well, and just be.

"I am."

"Good," Poe murmurs. 

He feels Finn shift against him, working a little closer, brushing his hair back. "Stay awake a little longer."

"Talk to me, then."

So Finn does.


End file.
